Politicians and legal scholars are almost unanimously sceptical about waste export, in particular if hazardous. From the viewpoint of neoclassical trade theory, however, this is surprising, since voluntary trade should make all participants better off. The paper draws on Law and Economics and presents an argument why export regulation can be rational for a state. Furthermore, the paper refers to an experiment on boundedly rational agents in lemon markets. The experimental results provide a justification for import restrictions. Both arguments, however, do not imply that waste trade within a political union (like the EU or the US) should be prohibited.